is fiberglass legal to use on a first robot?

[mechanicalbrain]

Originally Posted by Norm M.

The landing gear on my airplane is solid fiberglass. Not brittle. Also the main spar.

Fiberglass is a very generic term. A lot of people think of the polyester resin and chopped glass. In airplanes we use woven cloth and a two part epoxy. This epoxy has a much greater pot life, and gives you time to smooth everything out.

A couple sources for materials to learn with: Wicks Aircraft and Aircraft Spruce have a composite kit which includes a manual from Rutan's plans. The kit includes epoxy, cloth, different types of foam, and some flox and micro balloons. Another source for epoxy and cloth is at West Marine stores. The West System epoxy with slow hardner works quite well.

We have used fiberglass laid up over a large salad bowl (about 4 layers of 7 ounce cloth) to make 'hands' to grasp a large ball. 2000 game, maybe? We also used about 12 layers to reinforce some plywood to make a spring as part of a ball thrower mechanism.

Uhh i think your talking more about composites like on the site i posted. i was talking about the tube i posted a pic of but yeah thats the material i referred to. What we might do is a secret combination of layers of various sheathing to make our frame (assuming we can afford it)